As an answer to someone asking whether Unity will require a working OpenGL stack to operate in Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal", Mark Shuttleworth announced that Canonical would offer an optional, QT-based, "2D" implementation of Unity. Here is a video, too.

Should, why? Actually I think the less RAM an operating system uses the better (while obviously providing necessary functionality), since that leaves more RAM for applications, which actually IS the reason I launch an operating system in the first place.

If you care about performance, you buy adequate hardware, or make appropriate software selection (like using something apart from Ubuntu). You don't complain to people that write software and give it to you for free.

If you care about performance, you buy adequate hardware, or make appropriate software selection (like using something apart from Ubuntu). You don't complain to people that write software and give it to you for free.

You misunderstood. I see nothing wrong in an operating system saying 'you need 512mb to run this', I was arguing against the statement that a 'modern operating system should require atleast 512mb ram'.

I run Arch Linux, which is a 'modern' operating system where I choose the components I want myself, the system uses ~130mb ram (openbox, cairo-dock, cairo-composite manager, conky) which is way below 512mb. I run it on a 4gb ram machine, but that doesn't mean I want the OS to use up all that ram (except for aggressive caching), I want the ram for my applications, many of which are really ram hungry (like 3d stuff for instance), and of course being able to run many programs simultaneously (I often run blender, gimp, firefox (several instances), handbrake, inkscape etc all at once). The leaner the OS is while still providing me with the functionality I need, the better in my opinion.

Again this doesn't mean that I think there's anything wrong with an operating system demanding 512mb ram, it's up to the user to decide whether the requirements are matched by what it provides, I was just arguing against the blanket statement.

If you care about performance, you buy adequate hardware, or make appropriate software selection (like using something apart from Ubuntu). You don't complain to people that write software and give it to you for free.

These open source and free software developers would be nowhere if it wasn't for their users. Same with all of these proprietary software companies. If they lose their users/customers, they lose their business to someone else--whether it's another free alternative or some other company. They wouldn't last very long with an attitude like that, never taking the wishes of their *users* into consideration. And I don't think it's too much to ask for the developers to write more optimized code--it should be right up their with fixing bugs. Apparently a lot of people want it--just look at Windows 7 for an extreme, OS-level example.

They wouldn't last very long with an attitude like that, never taking the wishes of their *users* into consideration. And I don't think it's too much to ask for the developers to write more optimized code--it should be right up their with fixing bugs.

People want faster applications, they don't care if it requires 10megs more RAM.